Poachers Fined For Illegal Fishing At Drinkwater Park

drinkwater park poaching

In October 2015 one of our members called a committee member to report 2 people fishing on Drinkwater Park Lake who he thought were fishing illegally (5 rods each) and that he had observed them killing fish and putting them in a bag…

Usually we try to deal with this sort of issue by a swift visit to the lake to “have a word” with the anglers in question, to ensure that they comply with our fishery rules in future. However on this occaision our usual response team were all otherwise engaged so using the information on how to report fisheries crime to the police we called our local police station and reported that there were two people who we suspected of fishing illegally – giving the Home Office crime codes which detail the laws being broken and the appropriate response that the Police should make.

At the end of our call to the Police Station I asked if anyone was going to bother attending – and was pleasantly surprised to be told that an officer was already on the way..

10 minutes later we recieved a call from a Police Officer who had apprehended two people fishing with multiple rods, no licences, not members of the club and with dead fish in a bag……

Now that the legal process has taken its course – we are very happy to report that the people in question have been prosecuted and fined a total of £431 for poaching and unlicensed fishing offences – which we consider to be a great result

Many thanks to PC Richard Garland of GMP Bury South and to Ian Wood of the Environment Agency for all the hard work you have done behind the scenes to bring these people to justice and to protect a community angling facility.

And many thanks to the Angling Trust for providing the information on your website which told us how to report this incident properly

 

 

 

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